A Day in the Life of Monmouth Medical Center

Barely-begun lives are saved daily in the Long Branch hospital's neonatal intensive care unit. And that's just one of the dozens of stories told at Monmouth Medical

Delaney Barnwell gets to go home today, although at the this moment, the 2 1/2-year-old Oceanport resident is expressing her disappointment at the fact that she won't be able to paint a picture in the playroom here in the pediatric unit.
It's likely that, in the years to come, Delaney will not remember how her artistic impulses were thwarted. In fact, she probably won't recall this past week, the one where she almost died. Her mother, Jennifer Barnwell, will never forget it.
"I start to cry when I think about it," she says. "It's scary, thinking about how you might lose your child. It all happened so fast, we had to make big decisions in a short amount of time."
Those big decisions had to be made on a recent Sunday night. Later, the following Thursday afternoon, and any tears she sheds are tears of relief and happiness.
Delaney is fine now, thanks to the quick action of Vin Prabhat, a Shrewsbury otolaryngologist.
That's an "ear, nose, and throat" guy to you and me.
He was on call Sunday night and was called to another hospital to consult with a pediatrician. Delaney was there with a swollen neck.
"I was concerned because it had reached a point where she couldn't turn her neck," Prabhat says. "I ordered a CAT scan.
The results troubled him.
Delaney had an infection, a retropharyngeal abscess, which amounts to a big ball of pus, which wound up pressing against her windpipe. This had turned into a matter of life and death.
"We needed to operate immediately," Prabhat says. "And so we had to transfer Delaney to a hospital with a pediatric intensive care unit."
This was a lot of information to digest for the little girl's parents, for whom Prabhat was a complete stranger.
But they trusted him, and were impressed by the fact that he followed the ambulance all the way to Monmouth Medical Center.
"The procedure is difficult," he said. "Anesthesia, the insertion of a breathing tube, these add to the difficulty," the doctor said.
The surgery itself took 45 minutes. In that time Prabhat was able to locate the mass and drain it. In the days since, Delaney has been given antibiotics, and watched carefully. She'll have a follow-up visit in a couple of weeks and one more a few months down the line.
The Barnwells never knew Prabhat before Sunday, and in a little while, will probably not see him again. But for one week in April, he was among the most important people in their lives.
As she prepares to leave, Delaney may not understand all the fuss, but one thing she knows for sure.
"Going home," she says.